From this it follows that we ourselves represented the mineral kingdom on
the first chain, the vegetable on the second, and the animal on the lunar
chain. There some of us attained our individualization, and so we were
enabled to enter this Earth-chain as men. Others who were a little more
backward did not succeed in attaining it, and so had to be born into this
chain as animals for a while before they could reach humanity.

Not all of mankind, however, entered this chain together. When the lunar
chain came to its end the humanity upon it stood at various levels. Not
Adeptship, but what is now for us the fourth step on the Path, was the goal
appointed for that chain. Those who had attained it (commonly called in
Theosophical literature the Lords of the Moon) had, as is usual, seven
choices before them as to the way in which they would serve. Only one of
those choices brought them, or rather a few of them, over into this
Earth-chain to act as guides and teachers to the earlier races. A
considerable proportion--a vast proportion, indeed--of the Moon-men had not
attained that level, and consequently had to reappear in this Earth-chain
as humanity. Besides this, a great mass of the animal kingdom of the
Moon-chain was surging up to the level of the individualization, and some
of its members had already reached it, while many others had not. These
latter needed further animal incarnations upon the Earth-chain, and for the
moment may be put aside.

There were many classes even among the humanity, and the manner in which
these distributed themselves over the Earth-chain needs some explanation.
It is the general rule that those who have attained the highest possible in
any chain on any globe, in any root-race, are not born into the beginning
of the next chain, globe or race, respectively. The earlier stages are
always for the backward entities, and only when they have already passed